Nearly everything people are saying in this thread about Dark Flare has been said repeatedly, consistently, for nearly a decade at this point. There are a lot of head-scratchers in ZOS' design approach for me, but this is one of the biggest. Why have they done so little with this skill?

Here is a list of changes made to Dark Flare over the past several years of patches, starting with :

1.2.3: reduced the cast time from 1.5 to 1.3 seconds, added damage scaling with skill rank
1.6.5: added the Empower buff instead of an unnamed damage bonus to the next attack, added Major Defile
2.3.5: increased the damage by 12%
4.0.5: made the Empower count even if you didn't hit the target, and made a Templar passive extend the defile duration
4.2.8: fixed a bug where there was a delay between chain-casting channeled/cast time abilities
4.3.5: increased the damage by 10%
5.0.5: reduced the cast time from by 0.1 seconds, but decreased the damage by 37% "to make up for the fact that it can be cast more frequently" lmao. Also matched the projectile speed to other projectile skills.
5.1.5: increased the damage by 4% lel
6.3.5: reduced the cast time by 0.2 seconds (according to the dev note, this was to make it "easier to weave" within the GCD, but no one weaves this because it has a cast time) but nerfed the damage by 21%
7.2.5: fixed a bug where DF couldn't crit at all lol
8.0.5: reduced the cost by 270 magicka
8.1.5: DF grants Empower for 2 seconds longer (but Solar Barrage grants it 4x longer)
9.0.5: DF now grants the Sunsphere buff (but Solar Barrage grants it 4x longer)

In sum, in ten years of patches we've seen the following changes to Dark Flare:

• decreased the cast time as cast times of other abilities have been decreased
• massively nerfed the damage
• added Empower
• added Major Defile
• fiddled with the Empower and Defile durations
• fiddled with the cost
• fixed a couple bugs

It's amazing that a skill with a PVP-only debuff and a PVE-only buff and a cast time and massively nerfed damage hasn't caught on after a decade. What else can you expect ZOS to do, add something useful?

In PvP, paired with Deadly Strikes it is a bit better.
But not that much of a difference, that extra 5%

If the empower buff worked (maybe at half of the pve version) maybe?

just my $0.02

casparian wrote: »

Nearly everything people are saying in this thread about Dark Flare has been said repeatedly, consistently, for nearly a decade at this point. There are a lot of head-scratchers in ZOS' design approach for me, but this is one of the biggest. Why have they done so little with this skill?

Here is a list of changes made to Dark Flare over the past several years of patches, starting with :

1.2.3: reduced the cast time from 1.5 to 1.3 seconds, added damage scaling with skill rank
1.6.5: added the Empower buff instead of an unnamed damage bonus to the next attack, added Major Defile
2.3.5: increased the damage by 12%
4.0.5: made the Empower count even if you didn't hit the target, and made a Templar passive extend the defile duration
4.2.8: fixed a bug where there was a delay between chain-casting channeled/cast time abilities
4.3.5: increased the damage by 10%
5.0.5: reduced the cast time from by 0.1 seconds, but decreased the damage by 37% "to make up for the fact that it can be cast more frequently" lmao. Also matched the projectile speed to other projectile skills.
5.1.5: increased the damage by 4% lel
6.3.5: reduced the cast time by 0.2 seconds (according to the dev note, this was to make it "easier to weave" within the GCD, but no one weaves this because it has a cast time) but nerfed the damage by 21%
7.2.5: fixed a bug where DF couldn't crit at all lol
8.0.5: reduced the cost by 270 magicka
8.1.5: DF grants Empower for 2 seconds longer (but Solar Barrage grants it 4x longer)
9.0.5: DF now grants the Sunsphere buff (but Solar Barrage grants it 4x longer)

In sum, in ten years of patches we've seen the following changes to Dark Flare:

• decreased the cast time as cast times of other abilities have been decreased
• massively nerfed the damage
• added Empower
• added Major Defile
• fiddled with the Empower and Defile durations
• fiddled with the cost
• fixed a couple bugs

It's amazing that a skill with a PVP-only debuff and a PVE-only buff and a cast time and massively nerfed damage hasn't caught on after a decade. What else can you expect ZOS to do, add something useful?

I miss when it hit HARD. At least you had templar snipers running around making cringe pvp content lol.

danno8 wrote: »

Zama666 wrote: »

In PvP, paired with Deadly Strikes it is a bit better.
But not that much of a difference, that extra 5%

If the empower buff worked (maybe at half of the pve version) maybe?

just my $0.02

Deadly Strike set has no effect on Flare. It only affects Channelled and DoT, not cast time skills.

crap! tankz for setting me straight on this!